Colleen Janczak from Scintillation Nanotechnologies talked with us today about the really neat work they are doing to make nano-material detectors for radio isotopes. Their vision is to bring previously unheard-of measurement capabilities to radioisotope detection, enabling researchers across the full range of scientific endeavors to ask and answer previously impossible research questions.

This episodes breaks down the cool uses of radioisotopes in our community. We learned the most exciting moment for Scintillation, where we might find radioisotopes in everyday life, and how powerful a tool low-energy radioisotopes can be. Listen in to find out why seeing is so important. 

 Scintillation Nanotechnologies is going to be one of our Innovation AveNEW companies at SLAS2022 in Boston, MA, USA. 

Upcoming Events:

SLAS Meet-Ups

• Leiden, Netherlands (10 September 2026)
• Tübingen, Germany (20 October 2026)

SLAS 2026 Sample Management Symposium (October 21-22, 2026 | South San Francisco, California)

SLAS2027 International Conference & Exhibition (January 30 - February 3, 2027 | San Diego, California)

Thrive in Science: A Women's Leadership Forum 2027 (January 31, 2027 | San Diego, California)

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Julio Martin, SLAS European Ambassador, joins us again to co-host as we talk to Winston Chiu. Winston is an amazing young scientists who is a PhD student at KU Keuven in Belgium. Winston walks us through his research into highly infectious diseases, his adventures in robotic programming (and the accidents that happened along the way), and his viewpoint on life and learning. 

 Winston was a poster presenter at SLAS Europe 2021, a SLAS Student Poster Award Winner, and is an Expert Operator who manages all the technical aspects and operations of the state-of-the-art Caps-It system. Under the direction of his supervisor, Pieter Leyssen, he setup Caps-It from scratch by teaching the robotic arms, writing pipetting scripts and developing image analysis protocols. Winston has a background in industrial engineering biochemistry and has worked in clinical research laboratories where he acquired extensive knowledge in assay optimisation and validation. 

 Check out his winning poster: Caps-It System Facilitates Screening of 1.5 Million Molecules Identifying 6500 Inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 Replication

Watch this cool video on the Caps-It and check out his labs twitter account! 

Upcoming Events:

SLAS Meet-Ups

• Leiden, Netherlands (10 September 2026)
• Tübingen, Germany (20 October 2026)

SLAS 2026 Sample Management Symposium (October 21-22, 2026 | South San Francisco, California)

SLAS2027 International Conference & Exhibition (January 30 - February 3, 2027 | San Diego, California)

Thrive in Science: A Women's Leadership Forum 2027 (January 31, 2027 | San Diego, California)

View the full events calendar

Today we hear Lillie Bell, who is studying BSc Medical Biochemistry at the University of Leeds.  Lillie in particular has been looking at target and protein degradation as she was recently she was a Undergraduate Industrial Placement Student in the highthrouput screening group at AstraZeneca.  She is really excited that some of the work she did while AstraZeneca will be used for novel chemistry. Tune in for all the details! 

Lillie was a poster presenter and Student Poster Award Winner at SLAS Europe 2021 Digital. 

Upcoming Events:

SLAS Meet-Ups

• Leiden, Netherlands (10 September 2026)
• Tübingen, Germany (20 October 2026)

SLAS 2026 Sample Management Symposium (October 21-22, 2026 | South San Francisco, California)

SLAS2027 International Conference & Exhibition (January 30 - February 3, 2027 | San Diego, California)

Thrive in Science: A Women's Leadership Forum 2027 (January 31, 2027 | San Diego, California)

View the full events calendar

Today we are chatting with members of the AI Powered Drug Discovery Symposium planning committee; Fernanda Duarte and Kurt Anderson. We are really excited about this hybrid symposium coming up in early November in London. The event has a really amazing line up of speakers as we explore the latest research on data-driven discovery. In addition to the traditional topics surrounding AI Powered Drug Discovery, speakers will also dive into the ethical questions surrounding it. Listen in to hear why it is important to tune in to these sessions. 

Upcoming Events:

SLAS Meet-Ups

• Leiden, Netherlands (10 September 2026)
• Tübingen, Germany (20 October 2026)

SLAS 2026 Sample Management Symposium (October 21-22, 2026 | South San Francisco, California)

SLAS2027 International Conference & Exhibition (January 30 - February 3, 2027 | San Diego, California)

Thrive in Science: A Women's Leadership Forum 2027 (January 31, 2027 | San Diego, California)

View the full events calendar

How do we combine physics and engineering with biomedical research to develop technological solutions for accelerating the human disease knowledge? What cool new technologies are there to discover these solutions to improve the quality of patient life? Well, Silvia Scaglione from React4Life joins us today to share their deeply innovative and highly reactive work. Dive in with us today to find out more! 

Silvia Scaglione, President and Chief Scientific Officer from React4Life which is based in Genova, Italy. React4Life was an Innovation AveNEW company at SLAS Europe 2021 Digital.

Upcoming Events:

SLAS Meet-Ups

• Leiden, Netherlands (10 September 2026)
• Tübingen, Germany (20 October 2026)

SLAS 2026 Sample Management Symposium (October 21-22, 2026 | South San Francisco, California)

SLAS2027 International Conference & Exhibition (January 30 - February 3, 2027 | San Diego, California)

Thrive in Science: A Women's Leadership Forum 2027 (January 31, 2027 | San Diego, California)

View the full events calendar

Start By Listening. Sound advice from Amel Bendali of start-up Inorevia. She, and her fellow Co-founder, listened to what scientists in the field needed and decided to take the next step in lab automation by miniaturizing their processes. Hear how Inorevia is making things smaller, faster, and smarter as Amel Bendali talks with SLAS Program Manager Liz Frank, and co-host Julio Martin on the latest episode. 

Amel Bendali is COO & co-Founder of Inorevia, an Innovation AveNEW company at SLAS Europe 2021 Digital

Julio Martin is an SLAS European Ambassador, independent consultant, and blogger. Check out his blog, Sciengement Lab. 

Upcoming Events:

SLAS Meet-Ups

• Leiden, Netherlands (10 September 2026)
• Tübingen, Germany (20 October 2026)

SLAS 2026 Sample Management Symposium (October 21-22, 2026 | South San Francisco, California)

SLAS2027 International Conference & Exhibition (January 30 - February 3, 2027 | San Diego, California)

Thrive in Science: A Women's Leadership Forum 2027 (January 31, 2027 | San Diego, California)

View the full events calendar

Is it possible for the body's own immune system to fight of cancer? It could be. This is what Stephan Spangenberg and his colleagues at Scripps Research Institute are trying to figure out. Colin Cox from Seer sits in today as co-host with Liz as they chat with Stephan about the ins and outs of his research, his student poster award win, and his excitement over publishing his first research paper. 

Stephan Spangenberg is Graduate Student at the Scripps Research Institute. He was a poster presenter at the SLAS Europe 2021 Digital Conference and a Student Poster Award winner

Check out Stephan's paper in Cell Chemical Biology and this companion paper aimed at researchers setting up flow cytometry based screens for the first time . 

Upcoming Events:

SLAS Meet-Ups

• Leiden, Netherlands (10 September 2026)
• Tübingen, Germany (20 October 2026)

SLAS 2026 Sample Management Symposium (October 21-22, 2026 | South San Francisco, California)

SLAS2027 International Conference & Exhibition (January 30 - February 3, 2027 | San Diego, California)

Thrive in Science: A Women's Leadership Forum 2027 (January 31, 2027 | San Diego, California)

View the full events calendar

Working in 3D systems can be challenging, and the presentations at the upcoming Building Biology in 3D Symposium will provide researchers with a swiss army knife of tools to improve their work.  Listen in  as members of the program committee share their excitement around the sessions, keynotes, and collaborative potential. 

A special thanks to Brinton Seashore-Ludlow, Sinead Knight, Herve Tiriac, Ross Lagoy, Glauco Souza, and Marc Bickle for sitting down and talking to us about this event. 

The Building Biology in 3D Symposium is taking place October 26-27, 2021 in San Diego, Ca. 

Check out Ross's previous podcast, A Critical Platform and hear Brinton host Goals of Miniaturization. 

Upcoming Events:

SLAS Meet-Ups

• Leiden, Netherlands (10 September 2026)
• Tübingen, Germany (20 October 2026)

SLAS 2026 Sample Management Symposium (October 21-22, 2026 | South San Francisco, California)

SLAS2027 International Conference & Exhibition (January 30 - February 3, 2027 | San Diego, California)

Thrive in Science: A Women's Leadership Forum 2027 (January 31, 2027 | San Diego, California)

View the full events calendar

Manuela Beil-Peter (Analytik Jena GmbH) and Clive Green (AstraZeneca) sit down with Liz to share how the program of the European Sample Management (ESM) Symposium will explore this mature discipline and the evolutions and advancements that have taken place in the last few years.  Listen in to find out how we plan to energize the community and prove that the future is bright! 

The European Sample Management Symposium will take place in Berlin, Germany October4-5, 2021 . This hybrid event will showcase the work of compound and sample management professionals.  

Upcoming Events:

SLAS Meet-Ups

• Leiden, Netherlands (10 September 2026)
• Tübingen, Germany (20 October 2026)

SLAS 2026 Sample Management Symposium (October 21-22, 2026 | South San Francisco, California)

SLAS2027 International Conference & Exhibition (January 30 - February 3, 2027 | San Diego, California)

Thrive in Science: A Women's Leadership Forum 2027 (January 31, 2027 | San Diego, California)

View the full events calendar

A meta-roboticist, a theoretical physical inorganic chemist, and an automated science educator sit down for a podcast.... Join us today as guest host Mike Tarselli talks with Jason Hein, Joshua Schrier, and Josh Kangas  about the AI automation explosion. Where have we come from and where are we now? Where are we going and what are we doing to placate our pending robot overlords?  Let's find out together. 

If you want to learn more about what Mike, Jason, Joshua, and Josh work on, check out their work below! 

• Mike Tarselli, CSO at TetraScience
  • Mike on Google Scholar 
• Jason Hein, Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry at The University of British Columbia 
  • Jason on Google Scholar
• Josh Kangas, Assistant Teaching Professor, Computational Biology Department at Carnegie Mellon University
  • Josh on Google Scholar 
• Joshua Schrier,  Kim B. & Stephen E. Bepler Chair Professor, Department of Chemistry at Fordham University
  • Joshua on Google Scholar
• CMU Masters in Automated Science Program
• Hein Lab Automation 
• RSC Journal Digital Discovery

 Interested in learning more about the field? Check these out:

• Data-science driven autonomous process optimization
• Autonomous experimentation systems for materials development: A community perspective 
• Machine Learning the Ropes
• Introduction to Computational Physical Chemistry

Upcoming Events:

SLAS Meet-Ups

• Leiden, Netherlands (10 September 2026)
• Tübingen, Germany (20 October 2026)

SLAS 2026 Sample Management Symposium (October 21-22, 2026 | South San Francisco, California)

SLAS2027 International Conference & Exhibition (January 30 - February 3, 2027 | San Diego, California)

Thrive in Science: A Women's Leadership Forum 2027 (January 31, 2027 | San Diego, California)

View the full events calendar